


dusk

by buckgaybarnes



Series: romance isn't undead [2]
Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: (but briefly and not from a character), Blood Drinking, Developing Relationship, Flirting, M/M, Mechanic Newt Geiszler, Small Towns, Spooky Town Atmosphere, Vampire Hermann Gottlieb, newt catches feelings Easily, titles from here on out are just going to be the twilight titles but slightly different
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2020-06-25 10:50:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19744192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckgaybarnes/pseuds/buckgaybarnes
Summary: Hermann blinks at Newt. Newt does not turn to meet his eyes. “Pardon?”“I could clear out the study,” Newt continues. “It’s really just a desk and my laptop in there. And an old bed. I never bothered taking that out. You could—if you wanted a room, I mean—you could have it. Until you find somewhere else.”“Oh,” Hermann says.(or: the "or is it?" sequel to the "one night stands" of the first one)





	dusk

**Author's Note:**

  * For [skeleton_twins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skeleton_twins/gifts).



> an unnecessary sequel that i wanted to write because it sounded fun and because i love talking about this au with erica, for whom i wrote the first fic! you can probably expect another chapter or two after this :)

Newt and Hermann's ride into town is not awkward, necessarily, but it does carry with it a certain strange... _air_. How does one behave in the company of a man one’s had intercourse with hardly twelve hours ago, and met only a handful of hours before that? Hermann rarely stays the night with the men he sleeps with, after all, and he even more rarely is treated to breakfast and a guided tour by them the following morning. Newt does not seem to know how to act, either, despite how chatty he’d been in his garage. He tells Hermann to buckle up as they slide into his convertible, top up, assures him the drive is short (ten minutes, he said last night), then—after two minutes of seemingly unbearable silence—switches on the ancient radio.

“It’s mostly static around here,” he says, though Hermann thinks—after the Scan presents them with hardly more than a handful of viable, finicky stations—he likely could’ve figured that out for himself. “We have a public radio station, but it kinda sucks. If I’m lucky I can pick up a signal from the town just over—theirs is way better.” Newt deliberates between some sort of talk radio (the aforementioned public station, perhaps) and ancient-sounding jazz that Hermann thinks he may have owned as a record at some point before settling on the latter. “Is this okay?”

“I know this piece,” Hermann says, and he taps his fingers along idly to the brass and recalls the last time he heard it, a lifetime ago, in a crowded dance hall. A man had taken a fancy to Hermann. They’d—well. It was long ago. Hermann doesn’t dwell on things that happened long ago. Desperate to shake off the strange bought of melancholy the memory brought on, he decides to change the subject. “Do you know of any lodgings in town?”

“ _Lodgings_ ,” Newt repeats with a snort, before sobering up. “I don’t, actually. You didn’t arrange any before you drove all the way out here?”

Hermann offers a half-shrug. He never has in the past. It’s all largely formal, anyway. For show.

“There’s a motel closer to the opposite edge of town,” Newt muses, “and an apartment complex. Some people might be renting out rooms to boarders.” He chews on his bottom lip for a moment. “I mean. If you wanted—”

“Yes?” Hermann says quickly.

He does not find out what Newt intended to say; at that moment, the rest of the town becomes visible around a curve, and Newt’s attention is quickly stolen in favor of slowing the car down to the recommended speed. He rolls down his window to let in the breeze, unusually cool today for the climate. “It’s pretty boring here, Hermann,” Newt admits. “You showing up is the most exciting thing that’s happened in months.”

“Is there a school?” Hermann says, thinking back to his original plan of becoming someone’s substitute physics teacher.

“Sure,” Newt says, and begins pointing in several different directions. “Elementary and middleschool right up the road, high school further down that way. The post office is right there—and that’s the main supermarket—the laundromat—I could clear out the study, if you want.”

Hermann blinks at Newt. Newt does not turn to meet his eyes. “Pardon?”

“I could clear out the study,” Newt continues. “It’s really just a desk and my laptop in there. And an old bed. I never bothered taking that out. You could—if you wanted a room, I mean—you could have it. Until you find somewhere else.”

“Oh,” Hermann says.

“You don’t have to worry about rent,” Newt continues still, faster than before. “You could buy groceries every now and then, maybe, or do a little housework.” He’s drumming his fingers frantically on the steering wheel. “But only if you wanted.”

Hermann likes Newt very much, but he does not quite know how on earth to respond to _this_ , Newt asking him to move in after a single night spent together. “Newt,” he begins, cautiously. “I’m very flattered, but—well, we’ve only just met.”

“We fucked,” Newt says. Hermann winces.

“We did,” he says. 

Newt pulls up to a red light. He does not slow his fingers on the wheel. “It’s kinda...lonely out there,” he admits. Tap, tap, tap, tap. “A little creepy. It was nice having you with me last night, to be completely honest.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in ghosts?” Hermann says, unable to help the way his mouth twists up wryly.

“Doesn’t mean it’s not creepy,” Newt says. It’s his turn to give Hermann a wry smile. “I’m not exactly built to defend myself, Hermann.”

Short. Soft around the middle. By appearances, Hermann is not built to defend himself easily, either, but Newt seems to have forgotten this. “I will consider it,” he finally concedes. He doesn’t quite like the thought of Newt all alone there, either—especially not if he makes a habit of picking up odd strangers from the side of the road in the middle of the night and bringing them home.

The light switches to green. Newt pulls the car into a parking lot of a shabby-looking diner with a flashing neon _We’re Open!_ sign in the window, though it’s markedly less shabby than the one his garage is situated across from. It’s still in business, for one. Newt shuts off the engine. “If you still want to have dinner,” he says, and Hermann swallows back a sigh.

“Sure,” he says.

Newt insists on paying for them both. It’s nothing all that extravagant, mere standard diner fare identical to that of any diner Hermann’s ever visited in the past. Newt orders himself a veggie burger, large fries he insists he’ll share with Hermann but puts away more than half of just fine on his own, some less-than-appetizing-looking cheesecake, and Hermann insists he’s fine with a mere club sandwich and black coffee. He ends up picking the sandwich apart and shoving half of it into a napkin when Newt excuses himself to the toilet to clean ketchup (casualty of a badly-angled bottle) from his shirt.

They don’t talk much throughout it all, which is odd, considering how chatty Newt has been up until them. Hermann has a feeling he’s a little embarrassed about springing an offer to move in on Hermann so quickly. Even so, as Hermann watches the sun setting pink and orange on the horizon through the large windows of the diner, he realizes that even if he does not end up taking Newt up on his offer permanently he’ll be forced to stay with him at least one more night. Perhaps more than one. He can’t see a problem in that.

Newt leaves a generous tip and forces Hermann to take the remainder of his sandwich to go, and they continue their tour of the town. There are two grocery stores. There’s a post office. A public library. A handful of gas stations, each one more deserted than the last. A graveyard attached to the crumbling remains of an old church that Newt explains has not been functioning in several decades. (Determined religious devotees use the vague non-denominational one in the next town over.) “It’s supposed to be _haunted_ ,” Newt explains, pitching his voice comically low and mysterious.

“By whom?” Hermann says.

“No clue,” Newt says. “A ghost priest?” He slows the car down to the church curbside and cranks down his window. There’s an old backlit sign at the end of the dirt driveway with a little life in it still, flickering weakly, and though the church name painted atop has faded far too badly for Hermann to read it someone (likely a group of teenagers) has arranged the remaining marquee letters to spell out something obscene. “Legend has it,” Newt says, back to comically mysterious, “every night, if you listen closely, you can still hear him play the organ.”

“Ghosts can play the organ?”

“They can if it’s a ghost organ,” Newt says.

The evening breeze rustles the leaves of a nearby palm tree and the strands of Newt’s soft hair. Newt switches off the radio for a moment. They listen in silence.

“I don’t hear any organs,” Hermann says.

“Maybe he has the night off,” Newt says, and flashes Hermann a grin. He cranks the window back up and drives on.

Eventually, their radio signal turns as staticky as the rest of the rest of the stations, and Newt heaves a little sigh before switching it off for good. Hermann presses his cheek to the cool glass of the car window and watches buildings flit by. Most have been shut up for the night—a shop, a small house, a bowling alley. A pub still has its lights on. There are people inside. “Newt,” Hermann says, feeling oddly nervous in it. He’s not sure why. He’s going to have to ask eventually. “I don’t suppose that I could stay with you for another night, could I?”

“Sure!” Newt blurts out eagerly. Too eagerly. The corner of Hermann’s mouth twitches up. He turns away from the window in time to see a passing streetlamp illuminate Newt’s blush. “I mean,” Newt corrects, “yes, sure, if you need to. That would be fine. Stay as long as you want.” His eyes dart over to Hermann once. “The bed’s big enough for both of us.”

“Newt—”

“Don’t feel like you’re stuck to the sofa, is what I mean,” Newt says. “That’s all.”

Hermann knows that is not all Newt means. It’s why he’s not at all surprised when Newt rests his hand atop Hermann’s knee the moment he pulls the convertible into the dirt parking lot behind his shop. “Can we,” Newt begins. He wets his lips. “I mean. I don’t want to—”

Hermann reaches out and gently cups the back of Newt’s neck. He feels Newt startle, Newt’s strong pulse speed up, Newt’s sharp inhale, and Hermann shuts his eyes and presses their lips together. Kissing Newt today is as nice as it’d been last night; Hermann spends a minute or so indulging himself in alternating between nipping at Newt’s soft, pink bottom lip and grazing his tongue against Newt’s like he’s thought of doing all day. Newt’s glasses have slipped down his nose by the time Hermann smiles and murmurs “Yes.” He rights the glasses for him.

“I want to shower first,” Newt says, obviously embarrassed, as he leads Hermann into the bedroom and to rest on the edge of the bed. It’s still unmade. “You can, too. I’m just a little…” He gestures towards his grease-stained shirt, his messy and torn jeans, the sweat that plasters his hair to his forehead, and gives an awkward laugh.

“Please take your time,” Hermann assures him, resting his cane against the nightstand. He unbuttons his blazer and enjoys the way Newt’s eyes linger over him. Men often want Hermann, but never the way Newt so obviously does: never as boldly, or as blatantly, or as _hungrily_. In the past Hermann has usually been the one to initiate. In the far past, he often had to. It’s strange to be on the receiving end of hunger—strange, and exciting. If he lags in pulling the hem of his sweatervest over his head and takes extra care in dragging his fingertips, languidly, up over each Oxford button, merely to watch Newt’s flush rise with each, Hermann does not think he can be blamed.

“Trust me, I won’t,” Newt says.

He fucks Newt into the mattress before Newt’s hair has even dried. Hermann was correct in his assumption that Newt would still make the same sorts of interesting noises even in a reversal of last night’s position: he whimpers as he clenches around Hermann’s fingers, whines strangled little _nn_ and _ah—!_ s when Hermann drops his damp towel away fully, takes hold of his soft thighs, and pushes into him, and he calls out Hermann’s name, best of all, throaty and desperate and so loud Hermann thinks (for a moment) he ought to cover Newt’s mouth with his hand lest they get complaints until he recalls they’re the only people for miles. If Newt is enjoying himself, the sensation is only doubled on Hermann’s end; there is Newt’s pulse racing wildly beneath his lips, tight around his prick, under the tips of his fingers when he curls them over Newt’s wrist and hoists it up above his head, all sending Hermann tumbling into a heady haze of desire.

Newt is just so _alive_. The evidence of it is everywhere. Hermann wants more than anything to taste it—to bite and take some of it for himself—and Newt’s wrist is so very close. A mere inch away. He could’ve last night, but didn’t, and he could _tonight_ —

“Lie back,” Newt breathes, scrabbling desperately at Hermann’s hand, and the spell is broken, “lie back, Hermann, let me—”

Hermann nods and loosens his grip; Newt flips their positions and sinks back down onto him almost too-fast, a whine rising high in his throat. “‘S good,” he grunts out, and when Hermann grazes his fingers up and pinches at one rosy nipple, “oh, fuck—”

The light from the neon shop sign is streaming through the open window, and it catches, pink, in the tips of Newt’s hair as he tosses his head back, throws his features into sharp relief. His eyes are screwed up tight. His mouth hangs open. Sweat beads on his forehead. Newt Geiszler means trouble, Hermann thought that afternoon, and now, mesmerized by the way Newt’s muscles shift in the eerie pink glow with each sharp roll of Hermann’s hips into him, he believes it more than ever. 

Hermann is tired when it’s over. Not merely tired: he is exhausted. Lethargic. Twice as much as he’d been last time. He can barely keep his eyes open.

“I set an alarm,” Newt mumbles into a pillow, his hair tickling Hermann’s nose. Once they’d come, he stumbled from the bed long enough only to toss out Hermann’s condom and scrub at his abdomen with a damp washcloth, and now—debauched, mussed up, clearly sore—he’s sprawled in a little heap across Hermann’s chest. Heart rate settling back down. “Gotta wake up early. Appointment in the shop.”

“Mm,” Hermann says.

Newt presses a feather-light kiss to his pectoral. Hermann’s never met anyone so affectionate as Newt, or anyone so in need of affection in return. “You can sleep in,” he says.

“Mm,” Hermann says again.

Hermann waits until Newt is snoring gently to slip out from beneath him. He does not stir.

Hermann does not need much sleep, and he can certainly go about in daylight (no matter what all those ridiculous old legends say about people like him), but he still prefers to do his more... _grotesque_ business at night. There’s less of a chance he’ll be spotted and recognized. In all his years of his condition, Hermann has been spotted a handful of times, but never once recognized; it helps, he supposes, that he keeps a low profile. No one ever remembers the reclusive academic who pops his head into society just enough to tarnish his enigma status. Certainly not enough to connect an imposing figure bent over a neck in the dark to him. Besides—it seems more appropriate.

There is only one circumstance in which Hermann feels anything remotely akin to exhaustion, and (the memory of Newt’s strong, lovely pulse and blushing cheeks hardly helping) it’s why he redresses, silently, in the pink of Newt’s bedroom now and creeps out into the cluttered living room. 

Hermann’s suitcase is resting on the edge of the sofa, where Newt set it once he towed Hermann’s car yesterday morning. Hermann had been asleep at the time. He digs around through a few layers of unstylish sweatervests and socks before he finds what he needs: a small blood bag, lifted from the university medical center Hermann worked in until he quit quite recently. One of three remaining. He’ll need to stock up on more, and soon, until he can find something more permanent. It won’t do to have Newt seeing things he shouldn’t, or asking questions, or growing suspicious.

Hermann spares a glance at the bedroom door to make sure Newt is still sleeping soundly before ripping open the top of the bag delicately. It _is_ grotesque, but it’s a vast improvement from the usual ways Hermann’s known others of his kind to resort to—no throats ripped out in alleyways, no cattle drained of blood and inciting farmers to riot, no hapless solicitors walled up in castles (though that last one may be more fictional)—nor the ways Hermann himself’s resorted to—no bedding handsome young men and leaving them at dawn with the tiniest of punctures at their neck and vague memories of an enjoyable evening (though handsome young men have never been much of a hardship).

He crams the empty bag at the very bottom of the kitchen rubbish bin under that morning’s untouched breakfast when he’s finished and buckles his suitcase shut carefully; Newt’s breath hitches only very slightly when Hermann returns to bed and curls himself around his body once more. There’s no harm, Hermann decides, in indulging himself in sleep for one more night, though he feels stronger and more alert already.

There’s no harm in wrapping an arm around Newt’s body (soft, warm, pliant) as he does so, either, or in tucking Newt snugly under his chin and listening to his heartbeat and the tinny whine of the window fan until he dozes off as well.

* * *

This time, he wakes with Newt.

Not out of sentimentality. Newt’s morning alarm was a little difficult to ignore, and there is sunlight streaming, once again, through the sheer curtains directly into Hermann’s eyes. The first thing Newt says to him—mumbling, bleary-eyed, red line from his pillow pressed to his cheek, one leg hooked over Hermann’s, and having freshly rolled back onto his side after smacking at the alarm clock a few times and snagging his glasses—is “Your bedhead is hilarious.”

“Hush,” Hermann says.

Newt brushes his fingers through it with a grin. The act is strangely intimate, nothing Hermann’s ever felt before, and it sends a prickling shiver down his spine. “It is,” Newt says. He tugs on a handful. “It’s sticking up in, like, fifty diff—”

“Don’t you have an appointment?” Hermann cuts in, swatting him away. His mouth is dry.

Newt juts his lower lip out. His hand falls limp to the mattress. Hermann misses the contact almost instantly. “Aw. No quickie?” Hermann shakes his head. “Booo,” Newt says, but rolls off Hermann. He sits up with a groan and stretches his colorful arms above his head. “Shit, I’m sore.” It’s obvious as to what he’s referring to even before he leers at Hermann.

“Sorry,” Hermann says, though he does not feel very sorry at all. He watches Newt tug his boxers and yesterday’s wrinkled t-shirt on and pad over to his dresser.

“Will you manage without me for a few hours?” Newt says over his shoulder as he digs around through identical-looking corduroys. “The guy I have coming in now just needs a headlight fixed, but I gotta work on a whole engine after that. It might take me a while.” He pauses almost imperceptibly. “We can get dinner or something afterwards again.”

“I’m sure I’ll manage,” Hermann says, choosing not to acknowledge the invitation. Newt steps into a pair of torn skinny jeans and attempts, uselessly, to smooth his hair down with his fingers, then equally uselessly with a comb. He has pretty comical bedhead himself. “Is my car ready to drive?”

“One-hundred-percent,” Newt says. “Your keys are on the kitchen table next to the succulent.”

Hermann nods approvingly. “I may drive into town and look into lodgings. Perhaps a job.” He can realistically sustain himself on his savings for quite some time (he’s had quite a lot of time to build them up, after all), but no use in burning through everything when he doesn’t need to.

“Lodgings,” Newt repeats, though he doesn't poke fun at the phrasing as he had yesterday. His face falls.

A second alarm goes off. “Your appointment,” Hermann reminds him, and—swearing, buttoning up his fly, stepping into his dirty boots, and throwing a sock at the alarm clock—Newt scrambles out the bedroom door.

“See you later!” he calls over his shoulder. Hermann switches off the alarm for him.

Newt has done a fine job of fixing up Hermann’s car, and Hermann wonders, perhaps, if he should be the one to treat _Newt_ to dinner tonight as an extra thank-you. The engine works without a problem, more smoothly than ever before, the exterior has been washed, and he’s vacuumed out the seats and carpets. The washing was in vain, perhaps, as the moment Hermann ventures back out on the stretch of desert road that leads to town the hull picks up just as much dirt and sand as before. The gesture was kind regardless. Better yet, Hermann discovers, Newt’s managed to fix the air conditioning, so he no longer feels as if he’s suffocating or is forced to strip down to his bottommost layer. It’s _hot_ out here.

There are no listings available at the university (which, frankly, given its small size, is what Hermann expected), but there _is_ a position open for teaching calculus at the high school. He submits his name and a resume to both anyway and hopes for the best. He has far better luck with finding a place to stay; there are plenty of unleased flats at the nearby complex that Newt pointed out, a few houses renting out back rooms, a motel he could very easily make himself temporarily comfortable in. None have the charm of Newt’s cluttered second floor. Especially not the motel. He doesn’t submit his name to any of these.

Newt has closed up shop by the time Hermann—sweaty, coated in a thin layer of dust, and desperately wanting a shower—returns to the garage. Earlier than the sign out front says by almost three hours. The sun’s not even begun to set. Hermann makes the trek up the stairs and finds Newt on his hands and knees in what must be the spare room-turned-study, digging around under an old metal bedframe that houses a single bare, dusty, but stainless, mattress. The same type of tinny fan that Newt has in his room rests on the windowsill of an exceedingly grimy window. When Hermann clears his throat and knocks tentatively on the open door, Newt sits up so fast he hits his head.

“ _Shit_ ,” he says, rubbing at the spot, but he smiles when he sees Hermann. “Oh, hey, dude. Car runs fine?”

“Good afternoon,” Hermann says. “It’s running admirably.” He nods at Newt. “What are you doing?”

“Cleaning,” Newt says. He reaches back under the bed and pulls out what he’d been presumably searching for when Hermann walked in—a beat-up cardboard box. Empty, it turns out when he takes off the lid, save for a single baseball glove. “Crap my dad left behind, and—” He waves his hand towards the half of the room that qualifies it as a study: desk, stacks of papers, a filing cabinet, an overstuffed bookcase. “My own crap.”

“Ah,” Hermann says. “Is there a reason you’re doing it now?”

“Well, yeah,” Newt says, as if it’s obvious. “In case you—you know.” He flushes. “Decide to consider my offer.”

Hermann fidgets. Newt casts his eyes down and begins groping under the bed once more. There are more cardboard boxes stacked throughout the room, Hermann realizes. There's one overflowing with the contents of half of one bookcase, another marked _Shop Records — 2015-2016_ in Sharpie, another _Dad’s Stuff_. “Newt,” Hermann says, feeling mildly guilty. “You really don’t—”

“I have an office in the shop I never use,” Newt says. “I’m just moving everything down there. I wanted to anyway.” Pointedly, “I wanted to rent out this room anyway, too.”

Hermann fidgets again. Then he eases himself down, slowly, next to Newt on the floor, right on top of a threadbare striped area rug. He sets his cane aside. “I’d like to help.”

Newt flashes another one of those dangerous smiles and pushes a cardboard box towards him.

Hermann tackles the bookcases while Newt continues to dig around under the bed. These books are not all too dissimilar from those in the bookcase in Newt’s bedroom; there are more advanced biology texts, more research compilations of _Dr. Newton Geiszler, PhD_ , a number of comic books and manga, how-to car manuals for everything from changing oil to new paint jobs. Hermann wonders what amount of Newt’s skills beyond his background in engineering are self-taught. “Did your father train you to take over for him?” Hermann asks as he finishes up another shelf.

“Nah,” Newt says. His voice is muffled; Hermann turns to find that he’s entirely beneath the bed, with only his ass (in those tight skinny jeans) sticking out. He quickly shoves more books at random into the box. “When I moved out here, I remembered a bit from when I was a kid, just watching him, you know, but I’m a fast learner.”

Self-taught, then. “You’re very…” Hermann searches for the right word. Biologist, mechanic, apparently aspiring novelist. Attractive on top of all that. “Impressive.”

Newt’s glasses are crooked when he pops out from under the bed. “ _Impressive_?” he snorts. “You know how to make a guy swoon, Dr. Gottlieb.”

“You have a dust bunny in your hair,” Hermann points out.

They don’t finish, even with their combined efforts over the next few hours, but they manage to clear out an impressive amount of the room and wipe the windows clean by the time a sweating, red-faced, and now very shirtless Newt falls onto the bare mattress with a groan. “We need a _break_ ,” he says. He reaches his hand out blindly. “Toss me my phone, will you?” Hermann obliges, determinedly _not_ distracted by the exposed, soft skin of Newt’s torso, and he duct-tapes shut the very last boxes of shop records and stacks them with the rest as Newt orders them a pizza to share.

Hermann does not eat any, but he does accept Newt’s offer of a glass of cheap boxed red wine. He nurses that as Newt takes on the pizza (which Hermann insisted on throwing cash at him for). As they sit cross-legged on the scuffed hardwood floor, fan blowing back Newt’s hair, dirt smudged across Newt’s forehead and cheeks and his tattooed arms, and their only light sources a single dim lightbulb and the outside glow of the pink neon shop sign, Hermann is struck by the notion that he could grow very, very used to this. Not just could—Hermann would _like_ to grow used to this.

He picks up one of the white paper napkins that came in a plastic bag with the pizza and wipes a smear of tomato sauce from the corner of Newt’s mouth. Newt blinks at him. “I would like to rent the room from you after all,” Hermann declares.

“Oh,” Newt says. He takes the napkin from Hermann and wipes off the rest of his mouth. “You’re sure? I don’t want to—”

“I’m certain,” Hermann says. 

Newt grins bashfully. “Cool,” he says. He crumples the napkin and fiddles around with the stopper on the boxed wine for a few moments. “Uh. I could dig out some sheets for you now, or you could just—sleep with me, for one more night. Since it’s late.”

“It is rather late,” Hermann agrees, allowing Newt the smallest ghost of a smile. He finishes off the rest of his glass of wine. “One more night, perhaps.”

**Author's Note:**

> hope ur enjoying! find me at my usual places: hermannsthumb on tumblr, hermanngaylieb on twitter, and hermanngayszler for 18+ *only* horny twitter


End file.
